LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

; 

Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf JE><35 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Improvement 
of Perfection 



By/ 
William E. Barton, D. D., 

Author of " The Psalms and Their Story/' etc. 




United Society of Christian Endeavor 
Boston and Chicago 



56423 

ji-ibi^ry of Conuretej 

OCT 4 1900 

CopyrigM «ntry 
Uic^. // / f ' > 

SECOND COPV. 

Oliver fid to 

OBDtR DIVISION, 

-jOGT 18 19QQ 




Copyright, 1900, 

by the 

United Society of Christian Endeavor 



TO MY DEAE FEIEKD, 

JAMES HARRIS FAIRCHILD, D. D., 

and to the memory of his brother, 

EDWIN HENRY FAIRCHILD, D. D., 

My Hoxoeed Teachees 



PREFACE. 




HIS is no treatise on perfection- 
ism, nor does it contain any doc- 
trine unusual or strange. It is a 
simple talk with young people 
who are striving for a higher life, and is 
meant especially for those who are ready 
at the outset to lay it down, saying that 
the book is not for them, as they have no 
perfection to improve. 

I have known some people who believed 
themselves perfect. I have known a some- 
what smaller number whose friends be- 
lieved them perfect. The two classes were 
distinct. Those whose friends thought 
them perfect were shocked when they 
learned it, and said that daily they had 
need to pray, " Forgive us our debts," 
and "Lead us not into temptation." The 
ones who thought themselves to have at- 
tained perfection could never persuade 
their friends to agree with them. 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

Nevertheless, there are many young 
Christians who are seeking a higher life, 
and there are more who ought to seek it. 
There is something unreal and fanciful 
to many of them in an effort to lift one's 
self into a higher spiritual level. This 
tiny book attempts to define the kind of 
perfection which is possible, and to fur- 
nish incentive to higher spiritual living. 

May God bless the little book to those 
who read it. W. E. B. 

First Church Study, 

Oak Park, III, March 5, 1900. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTKODUCTION . . . . .9 

PAET I. — IMPEEFECT PEEFECTION . . 13 

i. The Flexibility of Language . . 15 

ii. An Appeal to Fairness . . .17 

iii. Perfection in Nature . . .19 

iv. Perfection in Human Workmanship . 21 

v. Judging by the Best . . .23 

vi. Perfection in Blossom and in Fruit . 24 

Paet II:— Chaeactee's Eaened Inceement, 29 

i. The Par Value of a Life . . 31 

ii. Life's Compound Interest . . 32 

iii. Character Begets Character . . 34 

iv. One Life at Par and at a Premium . 36 

v. Recapitulation . . . .40 

Paet III. — Cumulative Peefection . 43 

i. Perfection as Personal . . .45 

ii. Co-operative Perfection . . .46 

iii. Some Things That Have Been Perfected, 47 

iv. The World in Process of Perfecting . 49 

v. The Kingdom among Us . .52 

vi. Partakers of the Divine Nature . 53 

vii. God's Perfection and Ours . . 55 

viii. The Value of This Truth as an Incentive, 57 

ix. The Parable of the Shingles . . 59 

x. Life as a Relay Race . . .60 



£. 



THE IMPROVEMENT OF 
PERFECTION. 

And these all, having had witness borne to them 
through their faith, received not the promise, God 
having provided some better thing concerning us, that 
apart from us they should not be made perfect. — Eeb. 
11 : 39, 40. 

IKE volcanic islands in midocean, 
lifting their heads above the 
waters that surround them, the 
names of the great men in the 
eleventh chapter of Hebrews tower above 
the sea of oblivion that has buried the 
memories of their contemporaries, and 
cast their light afar. It is a great, classic 
chapter, a literary masterpiece, a cata- 
logue of the immortal names of the an- 
cient world. There are one or two mild 
surprises in it, too ; and they creep out 
in this concluding word. They suggest 
the title which I have chosen, which 
while antithetic is not wholly contradic- 
9 



10 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

tory, for perfection is cumulative and pro- 
gressive. There are some lessons about 
it in this verse, and we may well try to 
find one or two of the truths which are 
suggested. 

In the preface I have explained that 
this is no treatise on perfectionism, sanc- 
tification, or any of the technical terms 
by which different groups of Christians 
designate a special and definite religious 
experience apart from regular Christian 
growth. And let me hasten to say, what 
I must say again and again in these few 
pages, that I am using the term " perfec- 
tion," not in the hard and narrow sense 
which is given to it in theological writ- 
ing, but in the free and elastic sense in 
which the term is employed in the Bible. 

I wish to speak of the influence of 
good men upon their own time, of their 
labor as a heritage to subsequent time, 
and of the impulse which a right concep- 
tion should give us of their work and 
God's as related to ours. The titles which 
I have chosen are selected with reference 
to the declaration of the author of this 



THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 11 

epistle " that apart from us they should 
not be made perfect." I write, there- 
fore, of the kind of perfection which they 
had in themselves, of that which their 
work has since attained, and that which 
it may attain with our effort joined to 
theirs. 



PAET I. 

Imperfect Perfection. 

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright. — 
Ps. 37 : 37. 

And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou consid- 
ered ruy servant Job, ... a perfect and an upright 
man? — Job 1 : 8. 

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus 
minded : and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, 
God shall reveal even this unto you. — Phil. 3 : 15. 



11 Great truths are portions of the soul of man ; 
Great souls are portions of eternity." 

— Lowell. 

" Fain would I say, ' Forgive my foul offence ! ' 

Fain promise never more to disobey ; 
But, should my Author health again dispense, 

Again I might desert fair Virtue's way, 
Again in Folly's path might go astray, 

Again exalt the brute and sink the man ; 
Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, 

Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan, 
Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to tempta- 
tion ran ? ' ' 



" If I- have taken the common clay, 
And wrought it cunningly, 
In the shape of a god that was digged a clod, 
The greater honor to me. ' ' 

" If thou hast taken the common clay 
And thy hands be not free 
From the taint of the soil, thou hast made 
thy spoil, 
The greater shame to thee." 

— Kipling. 

11 Strength alone knows conflict. Weakness is be- 
low even defeat, and is born vanquished." — Madame 
Swetchine. 



Imperfect Perfection. 




I. The Flexibility of Language. 

OITNT it not a mere trick in the 
use of words. Language is flexi- 
ble, and word-meanings are not 
the hard and fast things which 
we sometimes essay to make them. If 
the Bible could have been killed, it would 
have died long ago through the effort of 
its friends, as well as its enemies, to nail 
its coffin-lid with hard and fast defini- 
tions of words most variously used. 
Who has not heard a devout believer 
holding science by the throat, and pound- 
ing its assertion that the earth was cre- 
ated in long periods, with the declaration 
that the Bible's use of the word "day" 
must be uniform ? And what word has 
come so readily to the tongue of the 
sceptic as this, that the Bible calls imper- 
fect men perfect, and instances David as 
a man after God's own heart ? 

15 



16 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

I have put together perfection and im- 
perfection in the title that we may face 
this point squarely. For this text says 
that these men did not become perfect, 
and there are other places in the Bible in 
which perfection of one sort or another 
is affirmed of some of them. In accord 
with these other and various commenda- 
tions of Noah, Abraham, David, and 
other sinful men here mentioned, whose 
character is strongly commended in other 
places, let me affirm that they did attain 
a certain sort of perfection. They served 
their own ages with such devotion and 
earnestness as to claim a place in this list 
of those who helped the world along to- 
ward the perfection which is God's goal, 
and, to do this, they required and had in 
them some of the raw material of per- 
fection. 

Now, it is in a sense something like 
this that the Bible calls any man per- 
fect, and it is a proper use of language. 
Indeed, as I shall presently show, it is 
the only way in which we can affirm per- 
fection of anything save God himself. 



IMPERFECT PERFECTION. 17 

II. An Appeal to Fairness. 

But first let me pause to say that I like 
it little that the Bible should be quoted 
unfairly against itself in the proving of 
imperfection in the men whom it com- 
mends. If the Bible commended their 
characters without reservation, and men 
had found out their sins in some other 
way ; if the Bible had told us of God's 
approval, and some uncovered tablet or 
papyrus enabled us to prove their human 
frailties ; then we might cast back into 
the teeth of the Bible the declaration 
that Job was a perfect man, and that 
Abraham was the father of the faithful, 
and David a man after God's own heart. 
But inasmuch as the same Bible which 
thus commends these men tells us hon- 
estly of their faults, and how God re- 
buked them, tearing the royal purple 
from the king, and setting him down in 
sackcloth till his breaking heart cried out 
for mercy, inasmuch as to the honesty of 
the Bible we are indebted for material to 
convict it thus (if we do convict it) of a 
false idea of perfection, I declare in the 



18 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

name of simple fairness that the method 
is dishonest and unfair. 

I am no apologist for the errors of 
these men. I am perfectly willing to ad- 
mit them. They were sins to them and 
according to the standards of their own 
day; they would be still greater sins ac- 
cording to our present standards. Those 
present standards are what they are in 
part because of the work of these same 
men, but I will not plead this in their 
favor. I will simply insist that it shall be 
remembered that the same Bible that 
gives them credit for their perfection, 
such as it was, convicts and condemns 
them, kindly but sternly, for their imper- 
fections. And as the Bible thus gives us 
both sides of these characters, I count it 
not a wrong use of language to use this 
antithetic title. I shall not speak of 
these or any other men as perfect, except 
in a sense such as this, which admits their 
imperfections. I shall not dwell upon 
their faults; others, delighting in the 
task, have made it superfluous for me; 
neither shall I excuse them. 



IMPERFECT PERFECTION. 19 

III. Perfection in Nature. 

God calls his work good. He has 
never called it complete. Those good 
people invert the teaching of Scripture 
who premise a perfect creation with sub- 
sequent deterioration. First was not the 
spiritual and after that the natural, but 
the reverse ; and the climb has been long 
and slow. God calls his work good at 
every creative stage, then treats it as raw 
material, and works it over. He has 
given us no illustration of his power to 
make something out of nothing. Nature 
has few tj^pes, and remodels them, incon- 
veniently sometimes, and imperfectly at 
best. 

"Full many a gem of purest ray 
serene " we read about, but among them 
there is not a perfect one. From the 
Koh-i-noor that flashes on the breast of 
Victoria down, they are all imperfect. 
If we cannot see it, it is because our sight 
or our instruments are too imperfect to 
detect the imperfection which we know 
exists. 

The wing of the bird is wonderful, but 



20 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

the maker of scientific kites does not fol- 
low its pattern, much as its mechanism 
suggests to him, and glad as he would be 
to make a kite that could fly as well. He 
will tell you, and truly, that the bird's 
wing is an imperfect organ of flight. 
The hoof of the horse is the most perfect 
of all nature's foot-making for purposes 
of speed, but the veterinary will tell you 
of its manifest imperfections. The hu- 
man eye is wonderful, but it is not per- 
fect. They have ceased, almost, to dis- 
cover new stars with the telescope, be- 
cause they can make a camera that in 
three respects excels the eye : it has a 
finer lens, that can find stars where the 
eye cannot ; it can endure without wink- 
ing or fatigue a whole night's study of a 
single spot in the heavens ; and it records 
accurately what it sees, while the eye de- 
pends upon the inaccuracy and uncer- 
tainty of memory. But the knowledge 
of the imperfections of the eye does not 
make the optician despise it. The ability 
to grind a finer lens does not cause him 
to have contempt for the eye itself. Nay, 



IMPERFECT PERFECTION. 21 

he would give all his skill ten times over 
to be able to make an eye, though it had 
ten times as many imperfections as it has. 
Not only so, but, recognizing a relative 
perfection in each of these things, we 
readily accommodate our language to the 
fact, and speak of the eye of the eagle, 
the hoof of the horse, the wing of the 
bird, as perfect in their adaptation to 
their needs. And such a use of language 
is correct, unless we are to eliminate the 
term altogether, or use it only of God. 

IV. Perfection in Human Workmanship. 

What do we mean when we speak of 
any human work as perfect ? A teacher 
returns a composition to a boy, marked 
one hundred per cent. That does not 
mean that the lad of twelve has spoken 
the last word that can ever be said on 
the subject which he has chosen. The 
encyclopaedias will not immediately get 
out new editions to include the results of 
his thinking. He has made no impor- 
tant contribution to human knowledge. 
But he has read well the few references 



22 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

given him, and has thought the subject 
over enough to make the thought his 
own and express it in his own words. 
He has been careful not to blot his 
paper, and has avoided the words which 
he could not spell. He has been pains- 
taking and conscientious, and, judged by 
the standard of what may reasonably be 
expected from such a boy, he has done 
his work perfectly, and may go and play 
with a light heart and a consciousness of 
having done well. Some day he will read 
that composition again, and smile over it. 
Thus, when I speak of Gray's Elegy 
as the most perfect of English poems, of 
the Yenus de Milo as a perfect type of 
female beauty, of St. Paul's as the per- ? 
f ection of Christopher Wren's genius, of 
Edison as having perfected the phono- 
graph, or of Addison's perfect mastery 
of English prose style, I use the term 
" perfect " or " perfection " in a way that 
people have learned to understand, and 
in a way that is perfectly fair, — and 
there I have used the word "perfectly" 
again. 



IMPERFECT PERFECTION. 23 

V. Judging by the Best. 

Let me say further that all such use of 
the word implies the judging by what is 
best. Let me drop the word "perfec- 
tion," lest it become tedious. "When I 
speak of Tennyson as a master of 
rhythm, I do not forget his occasional 
lapses. When I call Browning a mighty 
poet, I do not forget some shockingly 
bad rhymes. I do not pretend that 
every work of Millet's was an " Angelus" 
or a "Man with the Hoe." The world 
still judges an artist by his best. I have 
known a man to be made or marred by 
an accidental stroke of genius, according 
as the world read a like genius into all 
his other work, or condemned it unspar- 
ingly, though it had elements of power, 
because it lacked the master touch. In 
either case it showed the world's stand- 
ard of judging. It judges Wellington by 
Waterloo, and not by his minor victories, 
much less by his defeats. 

Now it is right that the heroes of an- 
cient time should be so judged. The au- 
thor of the epistle to the Hebrews brings 



24 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

them all to the test of faith, and finds 
them to endure it. Incidentally he brings 
to light almost ever other virtue; but 
this is the one thing which he claims for 
them, that they exhibited that quality of 
reliance on God which made them worthy 
the love of God and the honor of men. 
And that is what still may be claimed for 
them. 

VI. Perfection in Blossom and in Fruit. 

If to this it be objected that, while this 
is true, it falls short of our hard, matter- 
of-fact, unimaginative, Occidental use 
of language, and is not in our modern 
sense perfection, I must admit the fact 
from the point of view of that definition, 
and say that that is the only sort of hu- 
man perfection about which I know any- 
thing. 

True, perfection is possible. That is, 
it is possible at any moment for any man 
to do the whole will of God as he under- 
stands it. His understanding is defec- 
tive, and to that understanding God's 
will is accommodated. And so it is pos- 



IMPERFECT PERFECTION. 25 

sible for him to do it perfectly. I doubt 
not there are moments, perhaps hours, 
may be days, when by the grace of God 
he so does it, and so far forth his 
life is one of perfect obedience. Such 
moments, such days, these old heroes 
had ; and I am willing to call that perfec- 
tion, — a perfection which has its limita- 
tions, but was still perfection. 

When I say that an apple blossom is a 
perfect flower, I mean that it has five 
beautifully tinted, regular petals, a five- 
chambered pistil, and stamens which 
number a multiple of five. I also mean 
that the whole impresses me as beautiful, 
fragrant, symmetrical. I do not mean 
that it is good to eat, nor shall I mean 
that till the fruit is ripe. If the county 
fair occurs before the period for the 
ripening of this particular kind of apples, 
I may exhibit the green fruit, and per- 
chance bring home a blue ribbon upon it. 
The fruit is hard, green, bitter, and would 
make me ill if I ate it ; but the judges, 
knowing its time to ripen, and judging 
its progress accordingly, called it perfect 



26 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

fruit. Such was the perfection of the 
best of Old Testament saints, and in their 
best moods and moments. When domi- 
nated by the best that was in them, they 
had the perfection of the flower, the per- 
fection of the unripe fruit ; they " re- 
ceived not the promise" of complete 
fruition. 

So let us have done with quibbling 
about language, and the meanings, vari- 
ous and elastic, which may be covered by 
one word. A little imagination and a 
little common sense would have done 
away with half our commentaries. For 
why should books be written for the stu- 
pidity or wilful carelessness of those who 
object that the Bible both tells us to " bear 
one another's burdens," and that " every 
man must bear his own burden " ; to " an- 
swer not a fool according to his folly," 
and to " answer a fool according to his 
folly," that certain men " obtained prom- 
ises " by their faith, yet lived on faith be- 
cause they " obtained not the promise " ; 
and that God gave credit for the meagre 
and latent elements of perfection in the 



I3IPERFECT PERFECTION. 27 

lives of imperfect men, judging them 
often by their aspiration rather than their 
attainment, and counting their faith for 
righteousness, which indeed it was ? 

Let us thank God for every element 
of perfectness that has entered into hu- 
man life, and honor the name of every 
man or woman who laid hold on it and 
transmitted it, however far short they 
came of a realization of all its graces. 



PART II. 
Character's Earned Increment. 

Now all these things happened unto them for en- 
samples : and they are written for our admonition, 
upon whom the ends of the world are come. — 1 Cor. 
10 : 11. 

These all died in faith, not having received the 
promises, but having seen them afar off, and were 
persuaded of them, and embraced them, and con- 
fessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth.— Heb. 11 : 13. 



" I am owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars, and the solar year ; 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
The Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.' ' 

— Emerson. 

11 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, l Thou must, ' 
The youth replies, l I can ! ' " 

— Emerson. 

' ' There is no life so humble that, if it be true and 
genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not 
hope to shed some of his light. There is no life so 
meagre that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to 
despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may 
flash forth with the life of God. ' ' — Phillips Brooks. 



Chaeactee's Eaened Tnceemeistt. 
I. The Par Value of a Life. 




HAT they . . . should not be 
made perfect." Yet their lives 
have grown in honor and in their 
moral value to the world. I 
have spoken of the fact that they served 
their own times well as a proof of their 
worthiness. Every life must come to 
that test, and that constitutes its initial 
value. To put the thought in commercial 
language, I might say that the par value 
of every life is the value of the service 
which that life renders to its own age. 
But that is not its whole value. Some 
lives are below par a week after the fu- 
neral : others being dead still speak, and 
the whisper of their initial utterance 
swells to an anthem that echoes down 
the centuries. 

31 



32 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

II. Life's Compound Interest. 

He would greatly err who might sup- 
pose that the only value of a life is that 
of the impression which it makes upon 
its own age. Judged thus, Cromwell is 
a traitor and Homer a straggling beggar. 

1 i Seven cities strove for Homer dead, 

Through which the living Homer begged his bread.' > 

Epictetus and ^Esop had their value, 
not the one as a philosopher and the 
other as an interpreter of the soul of 
voiceless things, but their market value 
as slaves. History has no sadder trage- 
dies than those which illustrate this post- 
mortem revaluation of the world's heroes. 
"We should go far wide of the truth if we 
judged men with the judgment of their 
own age. The cross which gilds the 
highest spires of Christendom to-day but 
illustrates in the person of the world's 
greatest Character Avhat has proved true 
of many of her great characters, that a 
man's own age often fails to value him 
at his real worth. 

Now, what is the value to the world 



CHARACTER'S EARNED INCRE31ENT. 33 

of a character like that of Abraham? 
To his own age he was the somewhat 
erratic but prosperous sheik who, because 
he sought better pasturage for his flocks, 
or for some less valid reason (as the world 
estimated it), went out from his home 
and founded a new nation and a new re- 
ligion. He was a capitalist, an apostate, 
a lucky fellow, a fanatic, an honest man, 
a good fighter, or something better or 
worse than any of these, according to the 
standpoint of those who judged him. 
What is he to us ? He is the ancient 
world's early and concrete exponent of 
faith in God and duty, that caused him 
to go forth homeless but hopeful, friend- 
less, but the friend of God. He did not 
fail under the supreme test. He failed 
in minor tests, — let me say it again, and 
if need be for the hundredth time, — but 
he did not fail in this supreme test. 
Handel was a glutton, if you please to 
remember it ; but it is not by his gluttony 
I judge him when the " Hallelujah 
Chorus " opens the gates of heaven to a 
worshipful soul, and makes him hear the 



34 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

very praises about the Throne. And 
Handel's life is worth to me, not the 
value of his patronage of the coffee-house, 
but the value of his abiding genius and 
inspiration. That is what I call the com- 
pound interest of a faithful life. The 
value which it has to any single life is 
eternal increment, and the power of the 
life to give help to other lives is increased 
thereby. 

III. Character Begets Character. 

It is other life that inspires us. It is 
character that begets character. We 
grow like what we contemplate. ¥e 
are the sum of all the lives that have 
helped or hindered us, plus our own in- 
dividuality, and that is a part of the 
lives that we have helped to make or 
mar. 

Have you not read of the pebble in the 
middle of the lake, whose ripples reach 
the farther shore ? It displaces, in the 
first instance, a cubic inch of water, per- 
haps ; but miles of water respond to its 
impulse ere its last widened ripple dies 



CHARACTER'S EARNED INCREMENT. 35 

away on some far-distant coast. So life 
impels, inspires life. And the influence 
of a life widens and deepens. If Abra- 
ham's fidelity has made you more faith- 
ful, then Abraham's life lives itself over in 
you, and you are a child of him who is 
thus proved again to be "'the father of the 
faithful." What a progeny this has thus 
become ! If his children according to the 
flesh are as the leaves of the trees, his seed 
according to the spirit are as the sand 
upon the seashore ! 

How many ancestors a man has ! You 
have been wondering whether you were 
eligible for admission to the Sons or 
Daughters of the Eevolution, and were 
surprised to find how many ancestors be- 
long to every man. A million and a 
half, or thereabout, I believe, belong to 
the twentieth generation. There is room, 
then, in my life for something good to 
have been derived from an almost infinite 
number of the great lives of earth. All 
things are mine. Adam, with his sin, is 
not my only ancestor ! Abraham's faith, 
Joseph's chastity, Job's integrity, — all 



36 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

are mine, and by the laws of spiritual 
heredity ! 

IV. . One Life at Par and at a Pre- 
mium. 

But, lest the thought of my wealth in 
this inheritance cause me to forget the 
integral value of each of these lives, let 
me stop a moment and compare their 
value as I see it in one life of which I 
happen to know a little. 

I am "sorry that I do not know more 
about the life which I am to tell about. 
All that I positively know I read in one 
of the Chicago papers a few weeks ago. 
I paid it the compliment of forgetting 
the man's name. That is because, thank 
God, such deeds are not so verv rare. 
The paper told about it in four or five 
inches of space. I read about it, and 
turned the paper for something else, and 
left the paper in the street-car when I 
got out. But I thought about it after- 
ward, and so shall you. 

Although I did not know this man, I 
have known others like him. From their 



CHARACTER'S EARNED INCREMENT. 37 

lives let me supply a little detail about 
his. His name was Tom or Mike or Pat, 
and his par value was a dollar and a half 
a day. He wore blue overalls, and 
smoked a stubby clay pipe. And, having 
been faithful as a spike-driver, and being 
no longer able to continue work so ardu- 
ous, the company employed him to tend a 
crossing. They looked at his record first, 
and found that he had not got so drunk 
upon his wages Saturday night as to fail 
to appear for work on Monday. They 
judged him faithful ; ay, and, thank God, 
they found him so ! 

I have seen him, or others like him, as 
the train whizzed by, and he did not look 
like a hero. But he was. 

So much I have supplied. Xow for 
what I read. ISo farther away than 
Chicago, no longer ago than a few 
months since, this man stood out to signal 
the fast express that the crossing was 
clear. Waving his flag till the train 
came near, he turned to let it pass, just 
as a tiny little girl came toddling down 
upon the track from the opposite side. 



38 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

There was no time to stop the train. 
There was no time to catch the child and 
get away. 

Now, all the years that this man had 
worked, earning his dollar and a half a 
day at commonplace and monotonous 
labor, there had grown up in his soul an 
ideal of duty, to which he adjusted the 
simple habits of his daily task. And a 
thousand times he had thought of what 
that ideal of duty might compel ; but the 
years went by, and no great occasion had 
come. He had waved his red flag, or 
his white flag, or his green flag, and had 
done nothing more heroic than to help a 
timid old woman over the crossing. But 
now, in that instant of mortal danger, 
the ideal stood out clean-cut as a cameo, 
nor did the smoke or roar of the train 
dim its outlines or silence its imperative 
command. He shouted to the child ; but 
she did not hear, or, if she heard, she did 
not heed. Even as he shouted he was 
running, for he knew what he must do. 
He met her on the track amid the shriek 
of the whistle and the grind of the air- 



CHARACTER'S EARNED INCREMENT. 39 

brakes that could not avail. And in 
the instant that the engine was dashing 
him to death, he was throwing, and did 
throw, that little girl off the track and 
away from danger. 

Nay, nay ! It was not in the tales of 
King Arthur and his knights of the Kound 
Table that I read this. This splendid, 
intrepid act occurred but a few days ago. 
Hats off for my knight in blue overalls ! 
And above the grave that may never 
know a monument, or, if it has a simple 
stone above it, will bear but the name 
that was never in print but once, and 
then only to be forgotten, pay your trib- 
ute of honor to my hero in every-day 
clothes ! 

The par value of that life was a dollar 
and a half a day! But the real value, 
the moral value, of that life, is that sum 
plus all its helpful influence upon your 
life and mine. 

When I read of a deed like this, I feel 
that, if God should honor me some time 
by making me a crossing-tender, perhaps 
by the grace of God and the help of this 



40 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

man's example, I might do the same that 
he did. And if I never have occasion to 
serve God and my fellow-men in that 
particular station, still, by this splendid, 
knightly deed, which glorifies not simply 
this one man, but every faithful man of 
his class whose life contains the raw ma- 
terial for a hero, I may tend my own 
crossing in life, which is of another sort, 
indeed, but which requires the same de- 
votion, with like fidelity to his. 

And so 1 add to my thought of the 
perfection — such as it was — attained by 
these men, this element which time had 
computed and compounded, which, to- 
gether with what they wrought on earth, 
gives me the aggregate value of their 
lives and their struggle toward perfection. 

V. Recapitulation. 

Be not afraid of recapitulations. Dan- 
iel Webster used to repeat each proposi- 
tion in his plea as many times as there 
were men in the jury, and a book must 
say the same thing over in as many dif- 
ferent ways as there are classes of readers. 



CHARACTER'S EARNED INCREMENT. 41 

This, then, is the sum of what has been 
said thus far : that these Old Testament 
worthies served their own ages so faith- 
fully and well as to give to their lives a 
then present and intrinsic worth not to 
be lightly spoken against, though it co- 
existed with many and obvious imperfec- 
tions ; but that, added to this, is another 
worth, accumulated through long ages, 
to which the influence of these lives in 
all subsequent generations has made sub- 
stantial increment. 

These men were accumulators of good, 
sharers of it, and depositors of it. Their 
names have become synonyms for the 
graces w r hich they exemplify. This is 
the charm of biography. This is the 
reason why we have so much of it in the 
Bible, the biography of men faulty and 
imperfect, but striving toward a perfec- 
tion which has helped to shape the world's 
ideal of perfection. 

A great name is God's most fecund 
creation. Its progeny continues to a 
thousand generations. Thus Abel, not 
one of whose words is recorded, still 



42 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

speaks. Thus the victories of those who 
stopped the mouths of lions, quenched 
the violence of fire, and out of weakness 
were made strong, recur in every gener- 
ation. Their shouts of victory resound 
anew in the conquests of every age over 
passion, folly, and shame. Their life- 
work goes on in an ever perfecting per- 
fection, wrought partly out of their own 
lives, and partly out of the legacy which 
they have bequeathed to the world. 



PART III. 
Cumulative Perfection. 

Not as though I had already attained, either were 
already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may ap- 
prehend that for which also I am apprehended of 
Christ Jesus.— Phil. 3 : 12. 

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth in pain together until now. And not only 
[the creation] but ourselves, also, which have the first- 
fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within 
ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the re- 
demption of our bodies. — Bom. 8 : 22, 23. 

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill 
up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ, 
for his body's sake, which is the church. — Col. 1 : 24. 



' ' Lord, who thy thousand years doth wait 
To work the thousandth part 
Of thy vast plan, for us create, 
With zeal a patient heart ! ' ' 

— Newman, 

"God has made all good work dependent upon 
other good work for its beginning and its completion. 
He has made it impossible for any man to point to 
any good thing, and say, ' I did it. ' " — W. G. Frost, 
D. D. 

L i Not free, what proof could they have given sincere 
Of true allegiance, constant faith and love, 
"Where only what they needs must do appeared, 
Nor what they would? What praise could they 

receive ? 
What pleasure I from such obedience paid 
When will and reason (reason also is choice), 
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled, 
Made passive, both, had served necessity, 
Not me?" 

— Milton. 

i l Finish then thy new creation, 
Pure, unspotted may we be ; 
Let us see our full salvation 
Perfectly revealed by thee. 
Changed from glory into glory 

Till in heaven we take our place, 
Till we cast our crowns before thee, 
Lost in wonder, love, and praise." 

— Charles Wesley. 



Cumulative Perfection. 




Perfection as Personal. 

E have talked about perfection 
as though it were a personal 
possession. There is an ele- 
ment of truth in it. Paul 
freely conceded that there were some 
Christians among those to whom he 
wrote, whose advancement in the Chris- 
tian life made it appropriate or courteous 
for him to speak of them as perfect. He, 
who does not claim perfection, but dis- 
tinctly disavows it, however, does not 
consider them so much above him but 
that he gives them advice, which is to do 
just what he is doing, " Let us, then, as 
many as be perfect, be thus minded, " 
i. e., forget the perfection which they 
have attained and press forward. So let 
us forget the perfection about which we 
have been talking, which is personal, and 

45 



46 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

talk of that which is co-operative. For 
that is the kind about which the author 
of this epistle is talking. 

II. Co-operative Perfection. 

One of the surprising things about this 
eleventh chapter of Hebrews is the way 
in which it ends. It would be perfectly 
true to say that so far have these ancient 
worthies influenced us that "we apart 
from them have not been made perfect," 
and that for this reason God " provided 
some better thing concerning us" than 
to have lived before them, and hence de- 
void of their inspiring example. But he 
does not say that our perfection, such as 
it is, is the result of theirs, true as that 
would have been, but that their perfec- 
tion depends upon ours. 

Now we are getting down to the roots 
of things. If a personal perfection be in 
any sense hopeless, and if the claim to 
have attained it be the result of morbid 
introspection, then at least we may hope 
to claim a share in cooperative perfec- 
tion, cumulative perfection. And this is 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 47 

an illustration of the three things which 
I am talking about : ' The Pilgrim Fath- 
ers did a work which was worth doing 
for its own sake ; they did a w r ork which 
has been an inspiration to the world for 
nearly three centuries ; but the supreme 
value of it all appears in the fruition of 
their beginnings in the national life of 
to-day. Their work had its intrinsic 
value, its increment in the example which 
they left, and its complement in the labor 
of others w T ho have builded upon their 
foundation. They themselves realized that 
the third was the highest value of their 
toil, and recorded their willingness to 
give their own lives to that end, "yea, 
though they should be unto others but as 
stepping-stones, for ye performing of so 
great a work." Ah, but that was a pro- 
phetic word ! 

III. Some Things That Have Been Per- 
fected. 

There are some things that have been 
perfected. Kepler's laws, for instance, 
are final. We have ceased to expect f u- 



48 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

ture discoveries to change them. But 
astronomers from Ptolemy and even be- 
fore had been working on the same prob- 
lems, and Kepler's own teacher after 
years of labor bequeathed these problems 
to him with his own approach to a solu- 
tion. The ancient astronomers without 
Kepler were not made perfect. Nay, 
contradictory as were their theories, 
Ptolemy without Copernicus was not 
made perfect. The alchemists labored 
long after the universal solvent and the 
power to turn all metals to gold. Hun- 
dreds of the wisest men of earth gave 
their lives to this problem. They re- 
ceived not the promise ; they died, for the 
most part, with little gold. But our 
chemistry grew out of their effort. God 
provided some better thing than that they 
should have found what they were seek- 
ing. 

" And herein is that saying true, One 
soweth and another reapeth." For verily, 
we are all reaping what the past has 
sown. And, what is more, every reaper 
carries both sickle and seed-bag, or while 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 49 

he reaps scatters handfuls of purpose, 
which are the world's future harvest. 

God is patient. He is almost prodigal 
of time. He has never hurried, but he 
has ever his harvesting and re-seeding; 
and they go on together in the world. 

IV. The World in Process of Perfecting. 

The principle is the same as applied to 
things in progress of perfecting, which 
includes practically the world. I spoke 
of the Pilgrim Fathers. The Mayflower 
Compact without the Constitution of the 
United States was not made perfect. The 
Declaration of Independence without the 
Emancipation Proclamation was not made 
perfect. Nay, lest we should so readily 
pair our beginnings and completings of 
individual attainments, God has linked 
them together and intertwined them in 
such a manner that it may be truly said 
that Magna Charta will not have wrought 
out its final and logical result till the 
blessings of Anglo-Saxon civilization 
shall have wrought out a larger freedom 
for all men. 



■) 



50 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

Now, indeed, we begin to understand 
the elements of possible perfection in the 
imperfection of the older things. The 
blank and staring voids in their attain- 
ment are built into in part, and in other 
part are arched over, by the attainments 
of those who followed them, and these 
also left their own blank spaces, yet 
withal laid a good foundation for our 
building. 

Now in the rush of the locomotive and 
the steady throb of the ocean steamer's 
piston I see the approach to perfection of 
what a certain lad once saw afar off, but 
embraced and was persuaded of, when he 
noticed the steam lifting the lid of the 
kettle. Now in the whir of the electric 
car, the blaze of the arc-light, and the 
world-belting flash of the telegraph, I 
see the process of perfecting what was 
contained in the spark which Franklin re- 
ceived into his knuckle. And, if I am 
not mistaken, I have hit upon God's cus- 
tomary method of working. 

Is, then, the new the enemy of the old ? 
God forbid. Nay, the new is the fulfil- 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 51 

ling of the old. The worst enemies of the 
Old Testament are not the believers in 
the New, but the believers in the Old 
alone. Kow I understand why Jesus 
would not put new wine into old bot- 
tles, and why he opposed those whose 
axiom was, " The old is better." Men 
still quote it, and quote it as if he had 
added his authority to it, but he opposed 
it. There is ever a new theology which 
men cry out against as revolutionary, but 
it is the fulfilling of the old. There is 
ever the rise of some new political doc- 
trine, which is looked at askance and 
which at length triumphs; and in its 
triumph the historian sees, what the men 
of that generation never see, the triumph 
of what had long been striven for. And 
so it comes to me in the midst of the 
changing forms and creed of life, that 
love and faith and trust in God and 
Christlike living are eternally good, and 
that the interpretation of these to my 
own age, together with the handing of it 
down to other ages, depends somewhat 
upon me. 



52 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

V. The Kingdom Among Us. 

u The kingdom of heaven is within 
you." It was a true, noble word. But 
more accurate is this : " The kingdom is 
among you." There are some Christian 
privileges too sacred to belong to the in- 
dividual apart from his fellows. It is only 
when we understand it " with all saints " 
that we know the breadth and length 
and depth and height of the love of God, 
which passeth individual knowledge. It 
is only thus that we are " filled with all 
the fulness of God." It is not as a per- 
sonal attainment, a cubit added to our in- 
dividual stature by taking thought, that 
we come to the full height of Christian 
manhood. We must "all come, in the 
unity of the faith, and the knowledge of 
the Son of God," unto this state of per- 
fect manhood, " unto the measure of the 
stature of the fulness of Christ." 

" In the unity of the faith." That re- 
minds us that " these all died in faith," 
and that the unity of which we are speak- 
ing includes their faith who lived and 
died before Christ came. And it is also 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 53 

the unifying bond of our present effort. 
And now I begin to see how our lives to- 
gether make up the mosaic which is to re- 
veal the pattern of his face. "And ye 
are complete in him." 

" I belteve in the communion of saints." 
And thus I see how God is working, 
"that in the dispensation of the fulness 
of times he might gather together all 
things in Christ, both which are in heaven 
and which are in earth," who is " the head 
of all things to the church, which is his 
body, the fulness of him that nlleth all 
in all." 

VI. Partakers of the Divine Nature. 

Do we lose thus our hope of personal 
righteousness ? Nay, verily. We have 
never yet dared to think how much 
those Scripture promises imply that de- 
clare our oneness with Christ and our 
resulting privileges. Peter, writing to 
those that had obtained like precious faith 
with himself, but some of whom, though 
having faith, needed to add to it courage, 
temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly 



54 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

kindness, and love, assured them that it 
was not enough for them to have escaped 
" the corruption that is in the world 
through lust," but that the same " exceed- 
ing great and precious promises " which 
had made this possible enabled them also 
to " become partakers of the divine na- 
ture." The first verses of the twelfth 
chapter of Hebrews contain the same 
thought when they speak of Jesus, not 
only as the Author, but also the Finisher, 
the Initiator and the Perfecter, of our 
faith. 

More than once we are assured that 
He who hath begun a good work in us 
will complete it. In the magnificent 
chapter which contains his philosophy of 
the universe, Paul tells us that we have 
received the spirit, not of bondage, but of 
sons, and that to be a son of God means 
to be a joint heir of Christ, that we and 
Christ may be glorified together. John 
has the same superb thought, and tells 
us that what we shall be doth not yet 
appear, but we know that we shall be 
like Christ. Nay, as a foretaste of this 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 55 

and the assurance of it, " the earnest of 
it," Paul would say, we are told that 
" even now are we the sons of God," and 
thus heirs of the promises. I do not 
wonder when I find John adding that 
" every man that hath this hope in him 
purifieth himself, even as he is pure." 
There I find what I am seeking in in- 
dividual perfection. 

VII. God? 8 Perfection and Ours. 

" Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect." If the 
thought of perfection itself overwhelms 
me, what shall be said of this measure of 
it ? What, indeed, save that, while it 
seems to us unattainable, any lower 
standard must seem to us unworthy of 
the striving of those who are made in 
God's image ? Nay, for this we must 
strive, and, pitiable as are our failures, 
we dare not confess that the quest is 
hopeless. For, while the degree of that 
perfection shall be to us eternally unat- 
tainable, the quality of it cannot be hope- 
less to those who "with open face be- 



56 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

holding • as in a glass the glory of the 
Lord, are changed into the same image, 
from glory unto glory, even as by the 
Spirit of the Lord." 

One of the wonders of the Centennial 
Exposition was the mighty Corliss en- 
gine, turning its acres of machinery, the 
greatest and most perfect engine that 
had been made at that time. One day 
a man approached it, and, taking from 
his vest-pocket a tiny box, removed 
something from it, and set it on the 
engine-bed. A group gathered about, 
but only those nearest could see. There 
was a miniature engine, whose base was 
a gold half-dollar, and the cover of its 
box a silver three-cent piece. The tiniest 
alcohol lamp furnished its power, and 
three drops of water filled its boiler. 
But it was a perfect steam-engine, and 
the kind of perfection which it had was 
the same as that of the great Corliss. It 
turned water into steam and steam into 
energy by the same principle, and, in di- 
rect proportion to its power, the energy 
derived was applicable to the same ends. 



CU3IULATIVE PERFECTION. 57 

Such, I sometimes think, is to be our per- 
fection as related to God's. 

VIII. The Value of This Truth as an 
Incentive. 

Now, when I realize the meaning of 
this, I feel a thrill to the inmost corner 
of my soul. I am not here as a thing to 
be tolerated. I am here to help God in 
his work of perfecting the world. I am 
here to strive to attain for myself the per- 
fect ideal which God has set before me 
in Jesus Christ, and I am here also for 
the doing of a work which even God 
counts of value, a part of the very work 
of Jesus Christ. Perhaps this is what I 
have been lacking in the way of motive. 
Perhaps my personal strivings for my 
own sake have been to some extent futile 
and a bit morbid. Perhaps I am now 
ready to realize that by saving my life I 
am in danger of losing it, as not a few 
people, I am constrained to believe, have 
been lost through their very salvation. 
But I am to save my life by losing it, 
and to attain my personal perfection by 



58 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

adding my personal increment to the 
world's perfecting. This is something 
that appeals to all that is noble, cour- 
ageous, chivalrous, within me. It takes 
religion out of the realm of tatting-work 
and five o'clock tea, and makes it ele- 
mental, practical, spiritual and eternal. 

Once the men of a certain nation set 
out to choose a king. They agreed that 
the first man among them to see the sun 
should be the king, and long before the 
dawn they started toward the east to see 
it rise. All save one, who, feeling the 
greatness of the office, would not enter 
the scramble for it, but sat on the ground 
with his back to the east. So, while they 
pressed on toward the sunrise, and were 
yet in darkness, he looked up, and lo, he 
saw the sunlight, full and fair upon the 
top of the mountains, and cried, " I see 
it ! I see it ! " So sometimes are revealed 
to us the crowning truths of the spiritual 
life. 

"We need more introspection, more 
quiet, more meditation. This busy age 
has too little time for them. But we 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 59 

also need incentive and momentum. We 
shall not get much out of self-castigation. 
We shall not get much out of self-seeking 
spiritual enjoyment. But if we come 
where God is, and into the mighty sweep 
of his eternal purpose for human life, we 
shall not lack for impulse in our quest of 
the good, and we shall find it in the con- 
servation of an energy that is being eter- 
nally given out. 

IX. The Parable of the Shingles. 

Hear ye the parable of the shingles. 
A shingle is three times as long as the 
space it covers. It has for its first duty 
to cover its own little spot of roof, and 
do it well ; its second duty is to complete 
the strip of equal width that is made by 
the courses below; and the next is to 
furnish a tight foundation for the courses 
above to be laid upon. Now, shingles 
are of different widths, even as one life 
has one talent, another two, and another 
five. And the lives of men adjoining one 
another in a given generation, and doing 
their work, some well and others with 



60 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

knots and cracks, these are the shingles 
of a single course. And the generations 
mount slowly and steadily upward to- 
ward the ridge. And underneath are 
the rafters of God's eternal purposes. So 
may my life align itself with the good 
and the true of my own age, and be 
nailed fast to the eternal truths that are 
God's own ! It is not my duty to hold 
up the roof ; but there is one small spot 
upon it, whose length is measured by the 
years of my life, and whose breadth is 
made by my best effort : by the grace of 
God I will make that one spot secure ! 

X. Life as a Relay Race. 

We have been studying the last verses 
of the eleventh of Hebrews, concerning 
the men who did well, but who without 
us are not made perfect. You have 
noticed how the next chapter begins, 
u Wherefore, seeing we are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses." 
Who are those witnesses ? They are 
those whose names he has been recalling, 
Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the rest. I 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 61 

do not know that this text could be 
quoted to prove that saints in heaven 
know of our labor, but at least, by a 
startling and brilliant figure of speech, 
he makes all these whose perfection 
awaits our completing effort the wit- 
nesses of our performances. Just before 
the battle of the Pyramids, Xapoleon, as 
you have often heard, addressed his army 
thus : " From yonder heights forty cen- 
turies look down upon you." What sol- 
dier would not have proved a hero with 
such a reminder? The centuries look 
down on you, my friend ! 

Happy as we all w r ere to have our 
American boys win so many events at 
the re-establishment of the Greek games 
a few years ago, we were all glad that a 
young Greek won the Marathon race. It 
w r as long and hard, but O, how his heart 
must have leaped when he entered the 
arena where the whole nation past and 
present seemed gathered to behold his 
victory, where the elite of the present 
nation and the glory of ancient Greece 
looked down upon his success ! And the 



62 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

king's two sons leaped down, and, taking 
him by either arm, brought him up be- 
fore the king, who cheered his splendid 
success. 

Life is a race. Paul says so. The au- 
thor of this epistle says so. A thousand 
pulpits have said so. But neither Paul 
nor this author, had they lived to-day, 
would have gone past our modern athlet- 
ics for figures derived from the ancient 
games of Corinth. So let me add to the 
Bible figure of the race, that life is a re- 
lay race. The runners of the past, these 
worthies in the eleventh of Hebrews, 
they are in the grand stand now. The 
pennant is in your hand; my young 
friend, — go ! 

Yours is the inspiration of the present 
moment ; all the enthusiasm of youth 
and courage and of present need are 
yours. Yours is the inspiration of the 
past and of the future also — go ! 

The past has run with varying success, 
sometimes with courage and again with 
fear, but it has brought you the pennant, 
— bear it on! The past has borne it 



CUMULATIVE PERFECTION. 63 

through many generations, sometimes 
manfully, sometimes timidly, sometimes 
fiercely ; sometimes it has moved grandly 
on to the sound of martial music and the 
clash of arms ; sometimes it has been 
snatched from the flame that encircled 
the martyr's stake ; sometimes it has been 
swept on by the tide of missionary zeal ; 
sometimes it has moved slowly, weighted 
with the heavy cross, and amid the clank 
of chains ; sometimes its bearer has come 
up sobbing through Gethsemane, and 
again he has stood out resplendent in the 
glory of a dawn upon the mountain-crest 
which he has scaled in the night. By 
good work and ill, by duty performed 
and duty neglected, by heroism and 
tyranny, by mercy and cruelty, by devo- 
tion and by shame, the past has lived. its 
life, and amid it all there have not failed 
those who have run their race, and borne 
onward the banner of the cross. It is in 
your hand to-day. Let not your progress 
be retarded by any weight of cherished 
sin. The centuries are looking. The 
expectant future, too, is waiting for your 



64 THE IMPROVEMENT OF PERFECTION. 

effort. Christ himself looks down to see 
you run your course. Much depends on 
you to-day, rny brother. O, gird up your 
loins, and bear your pennant high! 
Wherefore, seeing Ave are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, 
let us lay aside every weight, and the sin 
that doth so easily trip us as we run, and 
let us run with loyalty and strength and 
zeal the race set before us, looking unto 
Jesus, the Author and the Perfecter of 
our faith. 



OCT* 4-1900 



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